A Commodore of Errors (28 page)

The chief engineer's office on the
God is Able
looked like every other chief ‘s office on a merchant ship. Even though the bulkheads were sheathed in Formica, they were not clean and shiny like they were elsewhere on board. They were smudged with black grease from the coveralls of the engineers and wipers who came and went from the chief ‘s office throughout the day. Even the leather-bound reference manuals lining one entire bulkhead were smudgy from the grimy hands that referenced them.

Captain Tannenbaume could not remember the last time he'd entered the chief ‘s office. If he ever needed to speak to the chief, he just picked up the phone and called him, or he'd wait until mealtime as he knew he'd see him in the
officers' mess. The chief always had two or three guys from the engine department in his office sucking up to him, laughing at his jokes, listening to him spout off, and Captain Tannenbaume would just as soon not subject himself to it. The chief ‘s blather made Captain Tannenbaume's stomach turn. Sure enough, when Captain Tannenbaume got to the chief ‘s office, one deck below the wheelhouse on the starboard side, he found the chief having a cup of coffee with the second engineer and the electrician. The three men were laughing among themselves, but when Captain Tannenbaume entered the office, they stopped. The second and the electrician did not look at Captain Tannenbaume. A sign of disrespect is what it was.

“I've got your noon slip, Maggie,” Captain Tannenbaume said. “I can't say I know what all the rush is about.”

The chief looked at the second, who covered his mouth with his hand.

“You got the GPS working?” The chief looked not at Captain Tannenbaume but at the second when he said it.

“No, Maggie. I've got Sparks looking into it.” Captain Tannenbaume dropped the noon slip on the chief ‘s desk. “I look at it as a good thing. The mates need to practice celestial every once in a while. Just to stay sharp, you know what I mean?”

The chief picked the noon slip off his desk and handed it to the second.

“I know exactly what you mean, Cap.” The chief looked at the electrician this time when he said it. Still looking at the electrician, he said, “Hey, Second, will you put that noon slip under my paperweight there.”

Captain Tannenbaume saw it before the words were out of the chief ‘s mouth. The second picked up the sextant and placed the noon slip under it. Then he and the electrician broke out laughing, covering their mouths with their hands and avoiding Captain Tannenbaume's woeful glare. Captain Tannenbaume's face turned red.

The chief looked Captain Tannenbaume directly in the eye when he spoke to him. “It seemed like it would make a good paperweight. I've had it for years. No sense in letting a heavy piece of brass go to waste.”

Captain Tannenbaume felt weak in the knees. God, he hated to have the big Swede get the best of him like that. He grabbed the sextant off the chief ‘s
desk. He wanted to say something clever, but what could he say? An awkward moment passed before he said, “Thanks a lot, Maggie,” and left the room.

Captain Tannenbaume heard the three of them laughing as he walked down the passageway. He had egg on his face, Captain Tannenbaume knew it. There was no escaping that fact. God almighty, how could he have let the chief get the upper hand on him this early in the voyage? And to have the electrician laugh at him that way? It was bad enough to have a junior officer laugh at him, but an unlicensed crewmember? Well, the electrician did not know what he had in store for himself. The long voyage home just got a little longer for him, the captain thought.

Captain Tannenbaume walked the rest of the passageway toward the radio shack with his head hanging low. He was so caught up thinking about what the chief had just done to him that he failed to see the GPS fly out of the radio room. He did hear it strike the bulkhead, though, and he turned in time to see it smash into little plastic pieces.

Captain Tannenbaume looked into the radio room and saw Sparks at his desk with his arms folded across his chest. He picked up a sliver of plastic from the shattered GPS, a little piece that bore the name of the manufacturer Garmin, rushed into the radio room, and shook the piece of plastic in Sparks's face.

“What the hell do you call this! Have you lost your mind!”

Sparks was calm. Serene almost. “See what I muh—muh—muh—mean about ssssssolid-state?” Sparks said. “What good is—is it if you can't fuh—can't fuh—can't fuh—fuh—fuh—fix it?”

Captain Tannenbaume stared at the man who sat before him. For the life of him, he could not figure what made Sparks tick. Most radio officers wanted nothing more than to fiddle around with electronics. As boys, they built erector sets and elaborate electric train sets and homemade ham radios. Aboard ship, they were known to be able to fix anything. If the chief steward needed a cake mixer repaired, he'd bring it, not to the electrician but to the radio officer. Yet Captain Tannenbaume had somehow ended up with a radio officer who did not like to fix things.

He slumped in the chair by Sparks's desk and held the sextant in his lap with both hands. He stared at the sextant a long while before looking up at Sparks.

“You think this is easy?” he said.

When Sparks did not respond, Captain Tannenbaume continued. “You think it's easy being captain of this ship? I've got a Third Mate who doesn't know what ocean we're in. I've got a Chief Engineer who's been using the ship's sextant as a paperweight. I've got a brand new wife who won't get out of bed because she's afraid of my mother. I've got a mother who won't get out of bed until my wife gets out of bed. I've got a so-called cadet who thinks she's on a cruise ship. And last but not least, I've got you, a radio officer who not only doesn't fix things, he
breaks
things.”

Sparks just sat there, impassive as a grapefruit.

Captain Tannenbaume held up the plastic sliver. “This is the one and only GPS we've got, Sparks!”

Sparks shrugged. “It was all . . . all . . . already broke.”

Captain Tannenbaume suddenly felt very tired. He pushed himself up out of his chair and stood before Sparks.

“Look,” he said. “When you send out the noon report, send along a telex to the office saying that my mother and Ms. Paultz joined in Singapore.” Captain Tannenbaume turned to leave. When he got to the door he turned around. “Hey, do you think we should send a SITCASREP on the GPS?”

Captain Tannenbaume was a stickler for reports. Aboard ship, there was an official report for every occurrence and an acronym for every report. A SITCASREP was a Situation Casualty Report, used whenever a primary piece of navigation equipment failed. On the
God is Able
, it was becoming apparent to Captain Tannenbaume that the GPS was not the primary piece of navigation—it was the
only
piece of navigation equipment, given the incompetence of his mates with the more traditional navigation instruments like a sextant.

“I'll take care of it,” Sparks said.

Captain Tannenbaume was starting to feel bad for yelling at Sparks and figured he'd make it up to him. “Stay at your desk. Where do you keep the SITCASREPS? I'll get ‘em for you.”

“No, please. I'll get it out of the locker in a minute.”

“Don't be silly.”

When Captain Tannenbaume turned around to open the clean metal filing cabinet behind him, Sparks came flying out of his chair. “No!” he said.

It was too late. Captain Tannenbaume opened the door to the cabinet and an avalanche of papers crashed down around his feet. Then a shelf broke loose and more papers and manila folders and bound forms of every description that had been crammed into the locker came pouring out as well. Captain Tannenbaume bent down and picked up a scrap of paper. It was a noon position report—from four years earlier. He dropped his hand to his side and let the piece of paper slip from his fingers.

Captain Tannenbaume turned around and faced Sparks. He cradled the sextant like a baby in his arms. He and Sparks held each other's gaze for a long while. It was Captain Tannenbaume who broke the silence.

“Everything in its place, hey Sparks?”

Captain Tannenbaume stepped over the pile of garbage and walked out of the radio room. He needed a nap.

INDIAN OCEAN FOG

T
he hoarse sound of the ship's foghorn woke Captain Tannenbaume. He looked at his watch and groaned. He'd only been asleep for twenty minutes. He was hoping to settle in for the rest of the afternoon. He needed the rest, considering everything he'd been through that morning. Captain Tannenbaume felt the silky skin of his young Thai wife brush against his thigh. The foghorn didn't wake her, she was still sound asleep. How could the girl sleep so much? She hadn't been out of bed since the ship departed Singapore.

She'd told him yesterday that if she didn't get out of bed she would not have to deal with his mother. He had to admit that his mother did not exactly make a good first impression. When Captain Tannenbaume introduced the two, the first thing his mother had said was, “Get your own name.”

“Mother,” Captain Tannenbaume said, “her name is Sylvia, too. Deal with it like an adult please.”

“Why should I?” she said. “I had the name Sylvia Tannenbaume first.”

Sylvia, who was more world-worn than your average nineteen-year-old, simply turned on her heels and walked away. She couldn't be bothered and had decided just to go to bed. She had not gotten out since.

Wait a second. Fog was not a weather phenomenon mariners had to deal with in the Indian Ocean. What was going on?

He called the bridge. “Swifty, what's going on up there? Why are you blowing the foghorn for Chrissakes? You woke me up.”

“Well, sir, it's just that some fog has rolled in.”

“Fog doesn't ‘roll in' in the Indian Ocean, son.”

“No, really, sir, the bridge is completely socked in. I can't see a thing out the windows.”

Captain Tannenbaume started to get out of bed for a look out his porthole but remembered that Sylvia had cardboarded and duct-taped the portholes so that she could sleep during the day. He put on his khakis and went up to the bridge. When he got there, he felt bad for doubting Swifty. The fog was so thick he couldn't see out of the windows. He walked over to the coffee machine and poured himself a cup. He liked to be on the bridge when fog set in, and one never knew how long the fog would last, so he poured himself an extra big cup and climbed up onto the captain's chair. From his chair he saw that the fog was so heavy it caused condensation to form on the windows. Swifty had his nose pressed up to the forward window.

“You should have your nose pressed into the radar, young man, not the window,” Captain Tannenbaume said.

Swifty, turning bright red, walked over to the radar and fiddled with the knobs to bring up a better picture.

“Second Mate's already tuned it up,” the helmsman, an able-bodied seaman named Ski, said. “Better not mess with it.”

Swifty ignored the helpful suggestion and continued to press buttons and turn knobs.

Captain Tannenbaume heard Swifty mutter something under his breath about a missing target. “What do you see in there, Swifty? Anything?”

“Not a thing.” Swifty looked to Ski for help. Ski gave him a look that said, “I told you so.”

Captain Tannenbaume sunk down into the big leather captain's chair and held the mug of coffee with both hands.
God almighty, Swifty really likes a cold bridge. Here we are in the Indian Ocean and it felt more like the North Sea.

“Ski, see if you can turn the AC down a bit,” Captain Tannenbaume said. “It's so cold you can hang meat in here.”

“We can't,” Ski said. “It's stuck.”

“Stuck? What are you talking about stuck?”

“The thermostat's stuck,” Ski said. “The chief himself was up here messing with it. He said it's stuck and we'd just have to live with it. He told me to open the window in the back if it got too cold.”

“The chief was up here?”

“Yeah. Just a little while ago.”

“Why the hell didn't he send the electrician?”

“He said the electrician was on break.”

Captain Tannenbaume suddenly had a visual of the electrician with his hand over his mouth, snickering at him in the chief ‘s office.

“Swifty,” Captain Tannenbaume said. “Get a hold of the electrician and tell him he's wanted on the bridge.”

Swifty walked over to the phone and called the crew lounge. “Who's this? The chief steward? Have you seen the electrician? He's wanted on the bridge . . . He is? Doing what? Would you like to get rid of him?”

“What's up, Swifty?” Captain Tannenbaume asked.

“The steward says he's trying to watch
The Outlaw Josie Wales
and every time Clint has a line in the movie, the electrician's saying it before Clint does. The steward is asking if we don't have any lightbulbs that need changing.”